Broken Kiosk

High noon on a lower-level plaza meant the light came sideways; it was reflected off durasteel awnings and vendor screens. Even the shadows looked awake. Yone had Shakka by the hand, weaving her through the elbows of a noodle line, past a fruit seller hawking bruised meilooruns. They’d risen with the city’s first hum, learned the pace of each other’s breathing, and still the morning wasn’t done with them. Yone’s fingers were warm; Shakka’s palm relaxed around them like she was learning a new grip. She had invited Yone into her life for more than one night.

Shakka kept her chin lifted, crowd-reading with the same calm that had been beaten into muscle memory. The habit steadied the nervous flutter under her ribs. It also let her notice the pair waiting by the fountain where the plaza opened: a geratric Ithorian in a grease-splotched utility vest and a snot-nosed Chadra-Fan pup in a jacket two sizes too big. Shakka’s brow arched toward Yone. Yone’s grin answered: yes, this is them.

The Ithorian beat them to the introduction, his Basic roughened to a soft rasp by age. “Rellik,” he said, twin mouths shaping the word like an old bolt finally turning. “Mechanic, mostly. Hinges, joints, anything that should fold and doesn’t. Fell into debt to the Hutts fixing other people’s messes. After years grinding down interest on interest, I got traded like a toolbox. Me, the little bat here, and Yone were placed together when the Hutts decided we weren’t worth the feed.” His laugh came out like a deep cough that decided to be joy at the last second.

The Chadra-Fan piped up before anyone could answer, voice a thin, eager squeak. “Bibbik,” he announced, chest puffing. “My parent had me in chains. I’m fast.” He wiped his nose with the back of his wrist, then blinked up at Shakka with unsinkable curiosity. “You’re shiny.” Rellik’s hand found Bibbik’s shoulder with practiced fondness.

“And you clearly met Yone,” Rellik added, gaze sliding to their linked hands. Another unspooled laugh. Yone colored, lekku flickering through a burst of meanings Shakka read even before the words: yes, this is sudden; yes, it feels like home anyway. “I imprint fast,” Yone admitted, looking between Rellik and Bibbik with a tenderness that made Shakka’s chest ache. “On them. On… people I trust.”

Shakka let go of Yone’s hand only so her own could speak. GSL shaped her name, her gratitude, a brief arc of who she was without the dangerous nouns. Then, with a steadier set to her shoulders, she signed the heart of it: I want your blessing to keep seeing Yone. M-TDv3 drifted at her shoulder and rendered the signs into sound. “My name is Shakka’Dira,” the droid said in warm, neutral Basic. “I’m honored to meet you both. I would like your blessing to continue a relationship with Yone.” The translation landed, no overshare this time, and Shakka sent the little droid a grateful side-eye. He’d learned. Or she had. Or both.

Rellik barked a richer laugh and shook his head. “Blessing? As far as I’m concerned, Yone’s the head of this family. We survived the Broken Horn because of her.” He ticked off memories on blunt fingers. “She kept us fed when fear ate through sleep. She negotiated with Vizago when the rest of us had only our breath to trade. She read the markets and the moods and, stars bless her, she found the cracks in the cage. That’s how we walked off that ship.”

Shakka’s stance changed by millimeters. Nothing dramatic, just a settling of weight to the balls of her feet, a quiet knitting of the guard she wore even without a saber in her hands. The word Vizago rang an old bell she did not like, and her eye went soft-focus as she scanned the crowd for shapes that meant hunters. The plaza remained only a plaza: water throwing light, a swoop gang’s idle rev two streets over, a mother tugging a child away from open fountain tiles. Breathe. One… two… three. The circle widened and held.

“Hey,” Yone murmured, leaning in so the word brushed Shakka’s cheek like a touch. “No one’s coming. The Hutts traded us because we weren’t profitable trouble. Vizago, though he’ll never say it, he released us himself. There’s nothing chasing us.” Shakka’s jaw flexed. She signed, plain as a pulse: I’m on the run too. Not from them. From worse. The old tension, mapped into her bones, explained itself before anyone could ask. Dave gave it voice, gentle as rain. “She’s wary because being free isn’t the same as being safe. She won’t say from who. That’s not a door she opens in a plaza.”

Rellik nodded, the kind of understanding that comes from repairs done in cramped spaces. “Then we don’t open it,” he said simply. “We build out from the ones we have.”

Bibbik bounced on his toes. “Build what? A stall? A shop? A secret?” His big ears wiggled, curiosity turning him brighter than the noon light.

“First?” Yone said, glancing at Rellik and Bibbik like she was taking attendance of her heart. “We eat. Then we plan.” She turned to Shakka, smile slipping shy again. “Unless… you have a better strategy.”

Shakka’s lekku formed thought after careful thought. Food is good. I have a small place. Work with our hands. Hide in plain sight. Rellik repairs. Yone negotiates. Bibbik runs messages. I… She hesitated, then let the truth slide free of its old harness. I keep you all in the calm. There was always a tooka too skittish to touch, a blurrg that needed a patient palm; on battlefields and back alleys both, her quiet had made panics settle and creatures, sentient or otherwise, breathe easier. The memory of a baby blurrg’s trembling muzzle brushing her fingers tugged a smile to the corner of her mouth.

Bibbik’s nose wrinkled. “I can be calm,” he declared, instantly less calm. Yone snorted and patted his oversized, batlike head. Rellik’s laugh, for once, came out without having to fight through old rust.

They drifted toward the vendors together like four bits of the same scrap finding a shared magnet. At a stall with a dented pot and a flickering sign, Yone haggled down the price of a gentle stew with an ease that made the cook grin despite himself. Rellik fixed a whining hinge on the vendor’s ladle rack while he waited for his bowl; no one asked him to, and that seemed to please him most. Bibbik darted to a water fountain and back, returning with his jacket pockets sloshing and a proud, soaked-to-the-elbows announcement: “I carry something important. There’s coins in the fountain.” Shakka stood at the edge of the line and lent the scene her stillness. Every time a passerby’s impatience spiked, it broke against that quiet like a wave losing interest.

When they found a sliver of shade to eat in, Yone set her bowl between her crossed legs and squeezed Shakka’s knee. “Blessing granted,” she said, mock-solemn, then softened. “And asked. If you’ll have mine, too.”

Shakka signed yes without hesitation. Then, after a breath, she added a steadier shape: We’ll do this slow. Fast brought us here. Slow will let us stay.

“Slow I can do,” Yone murmured, eyes bright. Rellik lifted his spoon in a toast that was mostly wobble; Bibbik copied him with wild, sloshing commitment.

“What comes after slow?” Bibbik demanded around a mouthful.

“Work,” Rellik said. “Then home. In that order, if we’re lucky.”

Yone tilted her head toward the endless city stacked above and below them. “Coruscant makes forgetting easy,” she said. “If we want to disappear, we can. If we want to be found by the right people, we can do that too.”

Shakka’s gaze took in the reachable horizons: a stall’s empty bin begging for a sign that told a better story; a closed-up repair kiosk with a cracked transparesteel window, ripe for a patient hand; a thin-eared tooka asleep on a coil of cable, which opened one eye at her and decided not to bolt. The world pulled in two directions at once: vanish or begin… And for the first time in a long time, neither choice felt like surrender.

She tapped the back of Yone’s hand with two fingers, a promise she’d learned to make and keep. Stay, they said again, but this time the word included four shadows and a future that didn’t hinge on running.

“After lunch,” Yone decreed, lifting her bowl, “we’ll go look at that broken kiosk.”

Rellik sighed happily. “Hinges,” he said, like a man contemplating poetry.

Bibbik wiped his nose, content. “And signs,” he added. “Big ones. With pictures.”

Shakka nodded. She’d letter them herself, quiet as a kept oath. Above them, the city roared on, indifferent as weather. Inside the little circle they’d made, the noise felt like cover. That was enough for a beginning.